| abstract |
The invention involves the provision of recombinant algal mutants that have a genetic modification to a nucleic acid sequence encoding a trehalose biosynthetic enzyme, and/or a genetic modification to a nucleic acid encoding an RNA binding domain. And in some embodiments either of these algal mutants can further have a genetic mutation to a nucleic acid sequence encoding an SGI1 polypeptide. Attenuation of one, two, or all three of these genes results in a mutant organism with increased lipid productivity. It was also discovered that one, two, three, or more genetic mutations can be accumulated or “stacked” in a particular mutant cell or organism to result in further increases in the production of lipid products. The lipid products of these mutants are useful as biofuels or for other specialty chemical products. |